Rugby Finds New Life in America

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And EA has the chutzpa to bring it. First details and screens on this potentially killer game.

By IGN Staff

Electronic Arts officially has returned to its roots by announcing its first rugby game since the Genesis days. Simply dubbed Rugby, EA's new effort into the wildly popular European sport could mean that competitors may follow, or it could simply mean that EA is experimenting with a team sport that it as intense as it is complicated.

Naturally, it's complicated from a foreigner's perspective, but the game that we saw and played today is quite fun, and although its still has some time in development, it looks quite nice.

Featuring 20 international teams, including the New Zealand All Blacks, the Australian Wallabies, the South African Springboks, England, Scotland, and France, among others, great play-by-play commentary from the "voice of rugby," Bill McLaren, and Jamie Salmon, and 23 stadia from all of the major rugby-oriented countries around the world, EA has covered its bases in classic form.

All team stars have been included in this next-generation version of Rugby, in which players can select from up to 40 different players per team. There are 600 player characters in all. EA has also acquired licenses from RFU, the ARU, the NZRU, the SARFU, FFR, SRU, the Bledisloe Cup and the Tri-Unions.

Players take on the game from moving camera angles, and can control every player on the field. Players can walk, run, kick, pass, dummy pass, scrum, and tackle, cut off passes, grubber kick, and punt kick, among other actions, and the game moves at about 50 frames per second.

Rugby is a one to two-player game developed by the UK team, Creative Assembly. Rugby is due by the end of June 2001, in North America. We'll have more on EA Sports' Rugby in the coming weeks.